


Back Again

by orphan_account



Category: Doctor Sleep - Stephen King, IT - Stephen King, Pet Sematary - Stephen King, The Shining - Stephen King
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Multi, Post-Canon, but also bringing characters back to life, what if all the stephen king stories existed in the same universe, will add tags with chapters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-26
Updated: 2019-09-25
Packaged: 2020-10-28 10:42:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20777237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: An unorthodox fix-it fic.What if Mike Hanlon, in an act of desperation and guilt, were to recall something he read ages ago during his hunt to find a way to destroy IT once and for all? But maybe some things are better off dead.





	Back Again

Stan and Eddie were dead.

Mike knew there would be no changing the fact that Eddie Kaspbrak lay dead, buried under the collapsed cavern, and Stan in a grave down in Georgia. There would be no calls or letters or visiting either of them. And he blamed himself. Had they not come back home to Derry for their showdown, Eddie would still be breathing air, his chest cavity-free. And had he not called at all, Stan would still be alive and living his happy life with his wife, his wrists untouched by the razor blade he took his own life with. 

Yes, of course, Mike blamed himself. He was the one who had stuck behind to call them all back. If he had only been smart enough to leave Derry, they would have been safe at least for a little bit longer. 

But no, Stan and Eddie were dead and gone. The others had left Derry as soon as they could, each of them vanishing to their individual corners of the map. Richie went back to Los Angeles, doomed to remember Eddie until the rest of his days. Bill ended up writing once again, finally able to write a novel with a good ending but with the thoughts of an oath haunting his mind. Beverly and Ben found comfort in one another, coming together like two pieces of a puzzle after all those years.

But Mike? Mike could hardly bear to leave Derry. He hardly knew anything outside of the town and had spent the past twenty-seven years obsessed over just one thing, dedicating his every waking moment to the defeat of IT.

Mike sat alone at his desk, having just got off the phone with Bill, and stared at his half-full suitcase sitting on his bed. He hadn't the heart to continue packing up his things in good conscious when Eddie was still here with no hope of leaving. Mike knew well enough that he couldn’t just leave Eddie dead in the rubble of the house on Neibolt Street.  
  
He stared at the half-full suitcase, thinking about how he could get down there to get Eddie back to the surface. They shouldn’t have left him there. They shouldn’t have let him _die _in the first place. Mike would bring him back in a heartbeat if he only could. He’d bring both of them back.

A thought occurred to Mike then. He had spent the last twenty odd years researching and gathering all information on supernatural occurrences in the area. Maine had more to offer than a child eating sewer clown. Buried in years of research, Mike could recall reading about something that could fix what he had done. Swiveling his chair back around, Mike took to pulling a thick file folder that was partially falling apart because of how full it was, labeled _ Maine - Greater Area _on the front with tape. 

He set the folder down on his desk, moving his notebook full of his notes on IT aside. The folder was full of newspaper clippings and print outs of news stories and notes he had taken personally from first-person accounts from various incidents. All across the state, strange things had been happening for decades. It wasn’t just Derry.

Mike opened up the folder, looking over each story.

"1976, a school in Chamberlain burst into flames during senior prom... No. 1953, a boy hits his head skating and... No, that's not it," Mike said to himself, thinking better when he said his thoughts aloud. It was an old habit of his that made him feel less alone in the world. Even if it only made the rumors about his slipping sanity worse.

"1951, a gas explosion morphed a whole town into... Hold on.” He flipped over a few papers and pulled out a yellowing piece of paper that had been ripped out of a journal. “It’s this. This one,” Mike told an empty room and picked up the page from its place in the file.  
  
Ludlow Maine. It was only an hour and a half drive out of Derry. The journal entry was old, dating back to 1943 during the first world war. Mike skimmed over the passage until he found what he was looking for.

_“I swear they had a funeral. I was there myself. But one day Tim Baterman was dead and buried and the next day he was up walking around town like he wasn’t full of bullet holes. It was like he was dead. He shoulda been dead, I swear. It ain’t right. If that was Timmy, there must have been something real wrong with him. He didn’t talk and he walked around real slow and his eyes. I’ll never forget that dead look. Jud and some guys went down to the Baterman house to find out what was going on and they musta saw something that spooked them bad because all four of them came running back to town like something was after them. I’ve never seen a grown man look so scared like that. After those five got back, there was a fire at the Baterman house. Both Bill and Tim were found dead. Something just wasn’t right. He was dead.” _  
  
Mike stared at the page, reading the passage over and over. There had been other cases in the same town. People dying but showing up a few days later but this was the only first-person account of the events. People were always hush-hush about these things. It seemed to be a small town epidemic of keeping to yourself. The price of ignorance was a high one to pay.  
  
But now Mike had hope. He could undo what IT had done to them, done to Eddie and Stan. Getting his hopes up was always a dangerous thing but he needed to believe that he could bring them back. Mike knew what he needed to do.  
  
Placing the journal entry back into the folder, Mike stood up from his desk. He picked up the file folder and carried it over to his suitcase to pack it along with spare clothes, a shovel, and a flashlight. He had to go to Atlanta to fix this.


End file.
